One evening at sunset, on their return trip, as they were under the shadow of the fortress, the engine of the launch broke down. While the black man from Trinidad was diagnosing the trouble, Peter was endeavoring to interest Roddy in the quaint little Dutch Island of Curaçao that lay one hundred miles to the east of them. He chose to talk of Curaçao because the ship that carried him from the States had touched there, while the ship that brought Roddy south had not. This fact irritated Roddy, so Peter naturally selected the moment when the launch had broken down and Roddy was both hungry and peevish to talk of Curaçao.
"Think of your never having seen Curaçao!" he sighed. "Some day you certainly must visit it. With a sea as flat as this is to-night you could make the run in the launch in twelve hours. It is a place you should see."
"That is so like you," exclaimed Roddy indignantly. "I have been here four months, and you have been here a week, and you try to tell _me_ about Curaçao! It is the place where curaçao and revolutionists come from. All the exiles from Venezuela wait over there until there is a revolution over here, and then they come across. You can't tell _me_ anything about Curaçao. _I_ don't have to _go_ to a place to know about it."
"I'll bet," challenged Peter, "you don't know about the mother and the two daughters who were exiled from Venezuela and live in Curaçao, and who look over here every night at sunset?"
Roddy laughed scornfully. "Why, that is the first thing they tell you," he cried; "the purser points them out from the ship, and tells you----"
"Tells _you_, yes," cried Peter triumphantly, "but I _saw_ them. As we left the harbor they were standing on the cliff--three women in white--looking toward Venezuela. They told me the father of the two girls is in prison here. He was----"
"_Told_ you, yes," mimicked Roddy, "told you he was in prison. I have _seen_ him in prison. There is the prison."
Roddy pointed at the flat, yellow fortress that rose above them. Behind the tiny promontory on which the fortress crouched was the town, separated from it by a stretch of water so narrow that a golf-player, using the quay of the custom-house for a tee, could have driven a ball against the prison wall.